Grieving Derbyshire mum is offered £1,160 in damages for the loss of her 18 year-old son

Vanessa Ride with a framed picture of her son Mitch.

Published:16:26Tuesday 18 October 2016

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The mother of a Selston teenager who was killed when a lorry he was working on reversed over him says justice for his death has not been served.

An inquest jury found that 18 year-old Mitchell Price’s death, caused by multiple injuries while working at Spencer Hall’s fairground depot at Pinxton in May last year, was accidental.

It was agreed by jury members that a plan to reverse a fairground ride trailer was badly communicated between Mitchell, another colleague and their employer Spencer Hall and at some point prior to reversing Mitch had attempted to access the lorry’s underside from behind the rear axle.

Mitch’s mother, Vanessa Ride, 44, has now been told by the solicitors representing her family that the most she can expect to awarded in damages for Mitchell’s death is £1,160.

She said: “I feel completely let-down by the solicitors - they told me they were going to try and take this to the civil courts.

“Now they have put a value on his life of £1,160 - it’s disgusting. No amount of money can bring my boy back but where is the justice there?

“I just want someone to understand how this has effected me losing a child of 18 - I have lost everything.”

A spokesperson for Nelsons Solicitors said: “Sadly, the law is such that when an unmarried person over the age of 18 with no dependents is killed instantly the compensation claim their loved ones can make is very limited and is often seen as an insult, which is why solicitors have been campaigning for years for this area of law to be reformed.”